


Obviously

by alexpeanut



Category: Original Work
Genre: Basically a Pacific Rim Russian!AU, Collars, F/M, Trust, because i can't help myself, relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 22:11:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1915728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexpeanut/pseuds/alexpeanut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She first meets him at a two years post-college get together"<br/>and it just escalates from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Obviously

**Author's Note:**

> Human!AU for some of my bbys <3 Unfinished from now till eternity, most likely.

She first meets him at a two years post-college get together, full of circles of friends who happen to overlap. She's briefly introduced to half a dozen people before Karen stops her in front of him. Her first impression of the tall bearded man is that he is a wreck, rumpled shirt creased around the collar from overnight vigils, tufts of brown hair going every which way. His face is tired and deeply lined with large bags under his eyes. She wants to bring him to his knees, cradle him in the circle of her hips and take the cares of the world away from his shoulders, but she barely knows who he is and restrains herself to a handshake just this side of warm.  
They sit down for dinner in a frenzy of hugs and switched chairs and she ends up sandwiched between him and an old friend she hasn't seen in a while, who spends half the meal telling her about everything that's happened since college. When she can politely escape the conversation it's to find her other seat-mate engrossed in a conversation with a friend who was always into tech stuff. Their quiet conversation is well above her head in technicalities but she can see how his eyes light up while talking about what he's working on.  
Someone calls for a toast and they all agreeably raise their glasses, Seraph making a special point to tap her glass to (Angie? Andrew? Anthony? She hadn't been paying enough attention when they were introduced)'s glass and smile warmly at him. Before she can start up a conversation someone across the table dives into a longwinded and entirely unnecessary speech full of self-promotion.  
The quiet, dryly sarcastic quip that falls from her seat-mate's mouth catches her by surprise and she chokes into her wineglass, nearly snorting some of the red liquid up her nose. She quickly puts down the glass as she coughs to clear her airways, half of the tears in her eyes from repressed laughter. Waving away the concern from the rest of the table, she turns slightly away from the table and catches his eyes, causing her to start giggling again when she sees the slight quirk of mirth under his full beard. In the end she has to excuse herself from the table to catch her breath, wandering towards the restrooms.  
Several minutes later and sufficiently calmed down, she exits the bathroom and nearly runs into a wall of muscle, which is nice enough to steady her with one broad, warm hand on her hip. She looks up (way up! He seems so much larger when standing then sitting) and smiles predatorily at his blush and quiet apology.  
Her friends always tell her she has no sense of consequences, and upon finding herself reaching up to curl a hand into his hair and tug his face down to kiss, she has to agree. His beard scratches pleasantly at her skin, his lips softening under hers as the surprise wears off. The hand on her hip tightens proprietorially, then he's letting go and stepping back a half step, blinking at her. She grins up at him with her flirtiest smile.  
"I have spent the whole night wanting to climb you like a tree. Your place or mine?"

She finds out later that the blush that darkens his cheeks goes all the way down.

She wakes early the next morning in a tangle of limbs, just this side of too warm and with her sheets smelling pleasantly of woodsmoke and fruits. He'd insisted on a shower that turned into round three (four?) before they'd fallen asleep, and she can't resist nipping at the muscled swell of his shoulder before slowly sliding out of his octopus embrace to initiate round four (five) because some things deserve repeat performances.  
She sees him out after a quick breakfast of cereal and toast and a last vicious make out session against the front door. She hums contentedly to herself as she cleans up the kitchen, pleasantly sore in all the right places and convinced she'll never see him again.  
She still can't remember his name.

Five months and a string of incredibly boring one night stands later she's texting Karen about her pathetic sex life, bemoaning that everyone her age (26, so she's not that old, thanks very much) is too self-obsessed to be good in bed.  
>>You were singing a different tune about Angel. You couldn't keep a smile off your face for a week :P comes the reply, and it takes her a good five minutes to connect the dots between the name and the (viciously attractive and VERY attentive) guy from the party.  
>>I'd give a limb for another night with him. Now there's a guy that knows how to please a woman~  
Karen's reply comes almost twenty minutes later.  
>>You owe me <3 Apparently he remembers you just as fondly  
followed by a string of numbers Seraph realizes is a phone number. She doesn't call it right away (despite really wanting to) because that would be too desperate even for her, but she can't help saving it into her contacts.

"Angel" (and really, what a weird name for a guy) sits there for another week and two more boring hookups, one of whom didn't even have the good grace to get her off before finishing himself. He's lucky she let him put pants on before kicking him to the curb.  
That night she's sitting on the couch idly flipping through channels as she checks email on her phone. Bored, moments later she's thumbing over his number without really realizing it.  
The decision to call him is easy enough and she presses the phone to her ear with a smile already curling the corners of her mouth. It clicks and a gruff 'hello?' echoes down the line, crusted with sleep. She realizes with a guilty start it's after 11pm but presses on.  
"Hey, it's Seraph. We met at that college party a while ago, I don't know if you remem-"  
He interrupts her with a soft "oh", and she can hear bedding rustling as he shifts, probably sitting up. "Yes, sorry, hi. I remember. I almost killed you with wine, right?"  
Her laugh is genuine and she can hear him chuckling down the line. "Yeah. I was wondering if you wanted to hook up again sometime...?"  
He yawns obnoxiously loudly into the phone and she's taken aback until he immediately stumbles into apologies, "Sorry, so sorry. Up till two three days in a row, today was my first day off in a week. When and where?"  
She rattles off the name of a quiet bar and a time, laughing to herself when a drawn-out yawn precedes his answer. He seems agreeable enough when he confirms the time and she hangs up with a small, private smile still on her face.

Later that week he enters the bar a few minutes late, looking only slightly more presentable than the last time. He still has huge bags under his eyes but the corners crinkle up in a smile when he catches sight of her at the counter. They attempt pleasantries, but his eyes keep straying down to her (admittedly tight) pants and every time he unconsciously licks his lips and shifts in his seat her thought process derails as she watches his muscles flex. They're back in her apartment in a record-breaking twenty three minutes and he has her backed against a wall shortly thereafter, her legs around his waist as he effortlessly pins her to the wall. Like that, their height difference is negated and she yanks him into an aggressive kiss, biting at his lips and tangling her hands in his short hair.  
They shed clothing in a messy line to the bed, which he carefully dumps her onto before crawling up after her. She likes the feeling of his bulk over her, likes it even better when he warms up for the night with his face between her legs. The sex marathon that follows is impressive, even by her standards, and she's fairly certain he's literally unable to walk by the time they collapse for the night.  
She gets up and makes her unsteady way to the bathroom, cleaning up and carrying a cloth back to wipe him down with. As soon as she's done so and tossed the towel away he grabs her, gently but inexorably pulling her down onto the bed and into his arms, assuming the octopus-like cuddling she remembers from last time with a contented sigh. He's asleep in minutes and she's not far behind, comfortable in his presence.  
She could get used to this.

Somehow it still blindsides her when, after three months of increasingly frequent booty calls, she wakes up at an ungodly hour of the morning to find an empty, if still warm, bed and quiet muttering out in the living room. She gets up and pulls on a pair of shorts and a camisole, padding quietly to the doorway to look out.  
He's pacing the room, three steps at most each way with his large frame before he has to turn and walk back. As far as she can tell he's engrossed in something on his phone, the blue light spilling over his cheeks as he mutters what sounds like calculations. The lurch of fondness in her chest makes her falter and she leans further back into the shadows so as not to draw attention to herself. She finds him adorable, with his sex-mussed hair made worse by the occasional hand he drags through it, tattoos across his shoulders and back flexing inky in the low lighting. Part of her wants to lick each line of tattoos (it's an engrossing experience) but a larger part just wants to hug him; take the phone away and coax him gently back to bed to help him get a few more hours' sleep.  
While she's busy debating he seems to snap out of his daze, furiously muttering into the phone's microphone for a long minute before turning it off. Her eyes take a moment to adjust to the shift in lighting and she doesn't notice him walking towards the doorway, forgetting to pretend she wasn't watching. He nearly jumps out of his skin when he finds her there, smiling sheepishly.  
"Sorry, did I wake you?"  
"The bed got cold." She pouts kittenishly up at him, drawing a low chuckle.  
"I can fix that." He pulls her gently back to bed, tweaking the sheets straight as she strips and joins him. In moments he's firmly wrapped her up in a cuddle, her head tucked under his chin and legs tangled together, and as she drifts back off she can feel him exhaling contentedly into her hair.

They don't actually admit they're dating until almost eight months into the thing they're doing. Booty calls have turned into regular sex, where they lounge around in the mornings, eating a solid breakfast together and discussing everything from news headlines to stories about their coworkers. Breakfast becomes lunch, lunch becomes dinner, and casual goes out the window. She discovers with delight that he has a deeply hidden romantic in him, and on his turn to choose anything from eating locals to what movie to watch will always pick something classy and romantic. She learns more about his job than she could ever hope to understand; only getting that it's something to do with robots and math and sciences far beyond her comprehension. He's a genius, that much is clear, and a well-read one at that.  
He seems equally fascinated with her job as a martial arts teacher, every so often showing up at the dojo she works for to watch quietly from the sidelines. They have uneven schedules and different tastes in all sorts of things but they work together, carefully smoothing out all the rough patches.  
When she looks up one day to realize his toothbrush-by-the-sink has become two drawers and a bathroom shelf she confronts him about it and they have their first real fight. Not because she's mad about the state of things but because he insists that him moving in would be disruptive for her, given the odd hours he keeps and his habit of pacing at all hours of the morning when a particularly difficult work problem won't let him sleep. She laughs in his face, citing her habit of practicing martial arts when and where the mood strikes and inclination to leave the kitchen a mess with no intention of cleaning up until she runs out of dishes. Somehow it devolves into a screaming match (well, her yelling with flailing arms, him going quiet and still) that ends with the two of them looking at each other from across the room with absolutely no idea what they'd been arguing about in the first place, both feeling a bit ridiculous. They laugh it off and he doesn't renew his lease at the end of the month.

It's not easy to learn to live together, but is comfortable.  
She gets used to his clingy sleeping habits and focus on the tactile, agreeably curling into his bulk when they sit down to watch a movie. He cooks far better than she does and quickly takes over all kitchen duties, citing that she'd end up killing the both of them if he let her make the meals. She tries to repay him by taking over laundry but she hates doing it and generally makes more of a mess of things, so he starts doing the laundry too. She wakes up one morning to find him methodically cleaning the apartment, even going so far as to dust off the bookshelves and clean all the random knickknacks she's accumulated.  
Within a month her place looks better than she can ever remember it being. The modern-style loft is just the right size for the two of them, once she's gotten rid of a side table or two in deference to his size. He'd tripped over one too many of them during his mindless AM rambles. He'd brought in a massive TV and several gaming consoles, as well as more kitchen equipment than she knows how to name.  
She repays his neatness in patience, making him coffee first thing in the morning when he's still so out of it he can barely raise the toilet seat to pee let alone operate a coffee maker. She coaxes him back to bed at ungodly hours of the morning when his brain won't let him sleep, whispering stories into his ear to drown out the equations. He starts looking healthier, the bags under his eyes receding with each extra hour of sleep he gets.  
When their off hours happen to coincide they waste some of the time having sex, but also can (and have) spent entire days yelling at each other over beers and friendly video game matches or watching movies in their pajamas. They rarely fight, with Angel too mellow to take offense and Seraph quick to forget whatever she had been mad about. The few times she faces the prospect of going to sleep angry Seraph jumps him once they've both stripped and takes out her frustration via incredibly agile angry sex. He's surprisingly okay with her taking charge of their sex life, happy to be moved where she wants him. Her friends often wonder out loud how exactly the height difference works (since he's over a foot taller than she) but Seraph just laughs and winks in response. After all, Angel's an engineer; problem solving is something he excels at.

For their one year anniversary Angel finally tells her the reason behind his name; the abandoned baby on the doorstep and years of foster-care and a nickname given by an overly-ambitious social worker in the hopes of elevating him into something great. In return she walks him through the meaning in the rings of tattoos around her neck; the only ones she refuses to explain when people compliment her ink. She tells him about the illness she beat in her teens, the three years she gave up to any doctor that offered help and a barrage of tests and near-death experiences. He kisses away the tears and envelops her in one of his amazingly warm hugs and they talk late into the night, trading terrible stories from their crazier years until they've both laughed themselves sick. Seraph still can't look one of Angel's friends in the eyes without sniggering and Angel blushes terribly whenever he sees one of her friends.  
She loves how he blushes, the worst of it hidden under his beard and below the collar of his shirt, but lighting up the tips of his ears and even his nose. She also loves his laugh, usually startled out of him and the only sound he makes that seems as big as he is, booming out into the room unexpectedly as it does. She loves when he surprises her with tulips, setting them up in a vase so they're the first thing she sees when she enters the apartment. She loves his terrible taste in books and lopsided smile and lion's mane of hair and the adorable way he has to clean his beard after every meal. She loves-  
"I love you." He blurts suddenly, in the middle of an ordinary dinner eaten around their tiny kitchen table and his blush reaches legendary proportions. Seraph blinks at him a long moment as he fidgets in his seat, a movement that looks ridiculous on his large frame.  
"Well, obviously." is the first thing she says, and only remembers to add "I love you too, you idiot" after his expression falls.  
They laugh about it later (much time and several enthusiastic rounds of sex later. The food's long gone cold and congealed by the time they get back around to cleaning it up) with "obviously" becoming a bit of a running joke for them.

Angel's work project is nearing completion and the stress plagues him constantly. Seraph worries for the weight he's lost, the hours he doesn't spend sleeping and instead endlessly paces the living room. One night he gets home well after dark, exhaustion pulling his shoulders into a slump but too wired on stress and residual equations to sleep any time soon. Desperate to ease his pain, she meets him in the hallway and takes his bag away, then his coat, coaxing him into stepping out of his shoes.  
She reaches up, standing on tiptoe to stretch past the broad swell of his shoulders and the tired crags of his face and run her fingers through his shorn hair. At the lightest pressure on his scalp his knees fold and he sinks to the carpet like the majestic fall of an old tree. All his power and bulk kneels before her short frame, her hand still tangled in the short strands of his hair. She scratches lightly at his scalp and his eyes slide closed, face smoothing, his great fists relaxing until his hands hang tension-free. He bows his head forward to pillow against the curve of her hips and she hums gently, stroking along the muscles of his shoulders until only her wiry strength is holding them up.  
They stay like that until her legs go numb, and only then does she murmur into the top of his head. "You've been so good today, my Angel. I'm so proud of you." He nuzzles against her warmth and her lips curve ever so slightly up. She strokes through his hair once more then moves her hands to curl around his biceps, urging him to stand. He does so slowly, swaying on his feet, his eyes still half-closed and face relaxed. She wraps her hands around his wrists and leads him the few steps to their bed, then gently coaxes his clothing off, lightly tapping whatever limb she needs moved. He bends to her will, stooping so she can pull the shirt over his head, lifting each leg in turn when she takes off his pants. Down to his boxers, she leads him to lie on the bed, pressing kisses into exposed patches of skin along the way. He murmurs sleepily once prone, one broad hand groping at the empty half of the bed as she quickly steps away to strip, then slides under the covers with him. In moments he's wrapped his limbs around her more securely than any octopus and each sleeping breath stirs her hair. She smiles against the skin of his chest and closes her eyes, matching her breathing to his, and they fall asleep together.  
(He teases her awake in the morning with gentle touches and soft kisses and she smiles into the pillows even as she shoves him away. "Where did you come from?" he murmurs into her shoulder, lips brushing her skin as one broad hand sweeps the contour of her spine.  
"Hell," she whispers back, "but you pulled me out.")

Something changes that night and she steps up readily, no longer standing passively by as he runs himself into the ground. She does her research, learning about doms and subs and everything that comes with them. She tries some of it out on him, gentle things, establishing her dominance and nudging him closer to the edge each time. His second dip into subspace is the product of weeks of long conversations, negotiations and careful testing, all made worth it by the peaceful look that spreads across his face when he finally gets there. The overwhelming rush of love in her chest almost chokes her and she has to gently tangle her hand in his hair to ground herself.  
It's not all so perfect, of course, but the struggle is worth it for those successful times when she coaxes him back up after and he's worn out and sated, his brain finally allowing him a solid eight hours of sleep. His work improves and he's livelier at home, with more energy. He gains back his lost weight and the smile she feels like she hasn't seen in month and it's all so very worth the effort.

Surprisingly, their sex life remains fairly tame (never boring, but he's not in it for humiliation and she doesn't like inflicting pain) with the occasional exception.  
It's her hands around his neck first, warm and heavy as she rides him. He leans up into the pressure, hips moving desperately. Haloed against the soft light trickling in the windows, she smiles down at him, then swoops down for a messy kiss, both of them gasping at the change in angle. Her fingers lace around the skin at his throat and his breathing goes labored as he puts more effort into making her come first, pupils blown wide with arousal.  
After, when she finally lets go he can't stop touching his neck, rubbing at the skin with the pad of his thumb and he misses her thoughtful appraisal of him as he slips into sleep.

The first time she collars him is kind of a joke, the strip of dark leather sitting too-tight against his Adam’s apple, rough every time he swallows. But he comes untouched, hips rutting desperately into the mattress as she writhes in pleasure against his mouth, her fingers tangled in the collar and cutting off his air. Afterwards he's dazed and lethargic and she laughs to herself at the sappy smile on his face he can't seem to shake himself of. She sees him off to work the next morning in an amazing mood, the bags under his eyes somewhat abated by a good night's sleep.  
The second time she catches him in the hallway, taking his bag from him and greeting him with a kiss and the collar. He bends to receive the former and she slips the latter around his neck, the fit perfect this time. She smiles at the lax look that instantly steals across his features, running a hand through his hair affectionately, and leads him into the kitchen to make dinner while she gives him simple orders. The longer he wears it the more relaxed he is, smiling quietly at each bit of praise she offers him. Dinner is great, the sex is fantastic and he sleeps like a dream.  
It becomes an accidental habit. Whenever the math in his head becomes louder than his own thoughts he comes to her on his knees with collar in hand and she brings him down to that quiet place. Sometimes she'll approach him with it and he'll bow his head to let her buckle it on, happy to be given the chance to please her. They don't talk about it much, but she does complain jokingly that she's straining her shoulder reaching all the way up to his collar and she ought to get him a leash. Neither of them can ignore how his pupils blow wide at the thought, but it's forgotten when she tackles him onto the bed to make good use of him.

They've been doing this thing for three months or so when she collars him and has him kneel in the bedroom. She cards through his hair once, presses a kiss to his temple and then leaves the room. She collects the leash from its bag, tucked behind the couch where she was reasonably sure he wouldn't find it but rather than go directly back to the bedroom pulls out a book and reads for a few minutes, giving him time to slip into the right mindset.  
When she reenters the bedroom he's exactly where she left him, arms linked behind his back and eyes still closed. He sighs softly at the words of praise she lets slip but doesn't shift from the position. She reaches out and clips the leash to his collar, palms sweaty with nerves but making sure not to jostle him. She takes a step back, the dark leather strip bridging between them and feels a jolt of arousal and love when his eyes fly open at the unfamiliar tug. He pulls against her a little, testing the connection and she firms her hold, carefully watching his reaction. The tenting in his pants and blown pupils reassures her and she can't help a predatory smile.  
He looks amazing like this, on his knees and looking eagerly up at her, waiting for directions. She feels powerful, trusted, loved and can't help leaning in for a messy kiss.

She wants to keep him forever.


End file.
